The Shade of the Moon (2 page)

“Do you live with your father?” Sarah asked.

Jon shook his head. “Dad’s dead,” he replied. “Lisa, my stepmother, and Gabe and I
used the passes.”

“My mother’s dead,” Sarah said. “She died a couple of months ago. Then Daddy got transferred.
It’s been hard on him. The clinic is terribly understaffed. There was a nurse there,
but now it’s just Daddy and me. I do my afterschools there.”

“I play soccer for my afterschools,” Jon said.

“That’s your afterschool?” she asked. “Playing soccer?”

For a moment Jon was irritated. All the students did afterschools—four hours of work
each afternoon—and he knew soccer seemed more like play than work to the kids who
held what they thought of as real jobs. It didn’t help that the Sexton team played
all its games on the road, so no one at home ever saw them.

But work was work, and Jon didn’t need to hear from some new kid who thought she knew
it all that what he did wasn’t necessary. All the clavers knew someday the White Birch
grubs would try something, and when they did, the clavers would be outnumbered. That’s
why the enclave was so heavily guarded. That’s why on Saturday afternoons all the
students spent their afterschools in judo and rifle practice.

The idea was to hold off that someday for as long as possible. Civilization depended
on it. The grubs outnumbered the clavers throughout America, but they had no idea
how to grow crops in a cold and sunless world. They had no idea how to treat illnesses
with limited amounts of medicine. They had no idea how to run a government, a school
system, a city, an army.

Jon knew how lucky he was to be a slip, and how lucky it was that Lisa had found a
job in administration right away. Alex had sacrificed his three passes so that Lisa
and Gabe and Jon could live in a safer environment, one with food and shelter and
electricity. The kind of life Alex had taken for granted when he was seventeen.

Jon had had two years of intensive study of botany, chemistry, and physics. There
was no point studying history when history no longer mattered. Instead he was taught
civics, government, leadership. He played soccer, not for the love of the game but
because he was an athlete and he represented the strength and the power of the enclave
system.

“We train five days a week,” Jon said. “On Sundays we travel all around the state,
for hours sometimes, to play. Coach says if we lose, it reflects badly on Sexton,
on all the enclaves. It would make us seem weak, inferior. Winning shows the grubs
who’s boss.”

“Grubs?” Sarah said.

“Yeah, grubs,” Jon said. “You must have had grubs in North Carolina.”

“You mean laborers,” she said.

“Is that what you called them?” he asked. “They’re grubs here. White Birch, all the
towns around here are grubtowns.”

Sarah frowned. “That sounds so ugly.”

“It’s just a word,” Jon replied. “You don’t mind being called a claver. Why should
they mind being called grubs?”

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “I mean, I do understand about the difference between
us and them. Why we get to live in enclaves, in nicer houses, get better food, better
everything.”

“It’s always been like that,” Jon said. “The rich always live better. Here, at least,
people are rich because they have special skills. The botanists are rich, not some
millionaire’s kid. And the grubs know how lucky they are to have jobs. Our domestics
are grateful to be working in Sexton. I bet yours feel exactly the same.”

“I haven’t asked them,” Sarah said. “Maybe I will.”

“No,” Jon said. “Don’t. It’s better not to bring that stuff up.”

“If you don’t ask, then how can you know how they feel?” Sarah said. “Maybe you think
they feel lucky because you don’t want to admit just how unlucky they are.”

“I’m not saying I know all the answers,” Jon replied, “but I trust the people in charge
do. Have you seen the greenhouses? There are miles of them now and more going up every
month. They weren’t here three years ago, and now they’re growing food for people
all over the state. Including the kids at White Birch High.”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “But theirs is probably better cooked.”

“Couldn’t be worse,” Jon said. “They’re not saddled with a tax-lawyer chef.”

Sarah laughed. Jon liked the sound of it, just as he liked how she looked: sandy hair,
green eyes. “Lunch tomorrow?” he asked.

“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t be in school tomorrow. I’m going into White Birch with
Daddy, to help him set up the clinic. We’re opening on Sunday.”

“Monday, then?” Jon persisted.

“Will the food be this bad?” she asked.

Jon nodded. “Maybe worse.”

“How can I resist?” she said. “Lunch on Monday, with you.”

Sunday, May 3

Jon got home to find Lisa putting Gabe to bed. He didn’t disturb her. Sunday was the
only day Lisa had with Gabe. Like everyone else in the area, she worked Mondays through
Saturdays. Everyone but him. Jon worked on Sundays, also.

Usually after a match Jon was in a good mood. Winning always felt good, and the bus
ride back to Sexton was spent in celebration.

But not today. Of course Sexton had won. It was never a contest. The grubtown team
was filled with guys who worked six days a week in factories or greenhouses. They
had no time for practice. On Sundays maybe, in preparation for the match against Sexton,
they played a little and drank a lot.

The Sexton team spent two hours daily on workouts and two more on soccer drills. They
went to high school or college, and if they got drunk, they did it after the match
was over.

The first half of the match had gone as always. Sexton led 3–1, keeping things close
enough that the other squad and the grubs who came to see the match felt like they
had a real chance. The clavers wouldn’t last. They were sissies and wimps. Grubs did
real work. They just needed time and a little luck and the victory would be theirs.

During halftime the Sexton team went back to their bus, drank juice, and sucked oxygen
while listening to Coach yell at them. Everything was fine. Everything was exactly
as it should be, exactly as it always was.

But this time instead of winning 10–1, they won 8–2. And that was enough to put Coach
in a rage.

He started the bus ride by screaming at Mike Daley, the college student who was the
team’s top goalie. He should never have allowed that second goal.

It didn’t matter to Coach that the score was 7–1, with only ten minutes to play. Coach
would have liked shutouts every game, except he’d been instructed to let the other
team score at least once. Let them have their moment.

So Coach let the other team score, but one point was enough. Two was a show of weakness,
and Daley had no business letting it happen.

Then it was Jon’s turn.

“You could have scored two more points!” Coach shouted. “Don’t give away chances like
that, Evans!”

Actually, Jon had had three chances but had chosen to pass rather than go for the
score. He’d never done that before. He was the team’s striker, and it had always seemed
right to him that Sexton beat their opponents by as big a margin as possible.

But not today. Today it seemed like rubbing their noses in it, and he couldn’t see
the point.

“You’re a friggin’ slip!” Coach screamed. “A pansy-ass grub lover. Were they your
brothers, Evans? Or were they your boyfriends?”

A few of Jon’s teammates snickered. Jon would have snickered too if he weren’t the
one being reamed.

“Sorry, Coach,” he muttered.

“Sorry isn’t good enough,” Coach said. “You’re off the team, Evans, if you keep playing
like this. Out of Sexton, if I have my way.”

“I’m sorry, Coach,” he said again, this time in a stronger voice. “It won’t happen
again. I’ll show those grubs who’s boss.”

Coach grinned. “That’s the spirit, Evans,” he said. “Sure, you’re a slip, but that
doesn’t mean you aren’t a claver. And a damn good one at that.”

But sitting in the living room hours later, Jon still had a bad taste in his mouth.
And it wasn’t from the bottle of potka they’d shared on the bus ride home.

Jon looked up as Lisa walked into the room. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “There’s
some leftover chicken in the fridge.”

“Maybe later,” Jon said. “We ate on the bus.”

“All right,” Lisa said. “If you don’t want it, Val and Carrie can have it for lunch
tomorrow. How many goals did you score?”

“Four,” Jon replied. “We won eight to two.”

“That close?” Lisa said. “I bet Coach was angry.”

Jon laughed.

“Laura called,” Lisa said.

“Didn’t she know I was out?” Jon asked. It was hard for Mom to make a phone call.
None of the apartments had phone service, and no one was allowed to use the phones
where they worked. There were a handful of pay phones in White Birch, and it took
hours on Sunday to get to the front of the line.

“She tried last night,” Laura said, “but there were five people ahead of her when
the curfew siren went off. She said Matt’s going to be there next Sunday.”

Matt lived in Coolidge, a couple of hundred miles away, working as a bike courier.
He traveled all around the area, transporting letters and small packages for clavers.
Sexton wasn’t on his route, but when he could, he swapped with another courier. Jon
had seen him last in November, but he knew Matt had spent a weeknight with Mom, Miranda,
and Alex in February.

There had been a time when Jon felt closer to Matt than to anyone else in the world.
When the bad times had come, he and Matt had spent endless hours chopping down trees
so there’d be firewood. The work they’d done had kept the family alive, and it had
provided Jon with the opportunity to get to know his big brother. They worked and
they talked, and Jon had felt grownup and respected.

But then Matt married Syl, and everything changed. And now Matt lived hundreds of
miles away, and Jon was lucky to see him twice a year.

“You must be due a Sunday off,” Lisa said. “I can’t remember the last time you had
one.”

Jon counted back. Ten Sundays, he thought. There were twelve men on the squad, and
only eight went to each game, so no one was supposed to travel to more than eight
games in a row. But Jon was the team’s best scorer, and Coach tended to forget the
eight-game rule. Besides, slips were supposed to do a little more than anyone else.

“I really want to see Matt,” Jon said.

“Of course,” Lisa said. “And it’s wonderful for Laura to have all her children with
her. I’m sure you can get next Sunday off.”

Jon wasn’t nearly as sure, not the way Coach had been screaming at him. But he’d have
to try. It could be another six months before Matt was in White Birch on a Sunday,
and it was never safe to predict six months ahead.

Monday, May 4

Most of the grubs who commuted to work in Sexton were taken by bus to the factories
or the greenhouses and then picked up at the end of the workday for the ride back
to White Birch. The only grubs permitted to walk in Sexton were the domestics, who
did the shopping while the clavers were at work.

Clavers never walked. Even though most of the volcanic activity, caused by the change
in the moon’s gravitational pull, had stopped nearly two years ago, the air quality
was still bad, and it wasn’t a good idea to spend too much time outdoors. Buses ran
regularly for clavers, with stops every few blocks.

Jon would have preferred to bike to school. It would take less time, and he’d enjoy
the exercise and the privacy. But even though it wasn’t forbidden to bike, it wasn’t
encouraged either. All the buildings in Sexton—the homes, the schools, the offices—had
air purification systems, but there was no way to purify the outdoor air. So, like
everyone else, Jon rode the bus.

Sarah got on the bus right as he did. Ryan and Luke were already on, but he sat next
to her instead.

“How was the soccer match?” she asked him. “Did you save civilization?”

“I did my part,” Jon said. “You can sleep safely tonight.”

Sarah tilted her head toward the window. “With all the guards here, I don’t have to
worry. Unless they get ideas of their own.”

“You must have had guards in your other enclave,” Jon said.

“Yes,” Sarah said. “But not as many. At least not as many on the streets. I don’t
know. Everything seems darker here.”

“Everything is darker here,” Jon said. “The farther west you go, the darker the sky.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” she said.

Jon glanced back at Ryan and Luke. He caught Luke’s eye. Luke pointed to the empty
seat by his side. Jon shook his head.

“Is it really that different?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I didn’t want to leave. I guess I’m just homesick.”

By the time his family had left Pennsylvania, all Jon had wanted was to get away.
But he supposed if you had food and water and electricity, you’d want to stay put.

He looked up and saw Ryan standing by him. “Come on, Evans,” he said. “We miss you.”

“It’s okay,” Sarah said. “Go. I’ll see you at lunch?”

Jon nodded and followed Ryan back to the empty seat. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“Tyler will tell you,” Ryan said.

Jon looked at Luke, but he didn’t say anything. They sat in silence until the bus
stopped at school. Tyler and Zachary were already there.

“He was sitting with her on the bus,” Ryan said to them. “They were going to have
lunch again.”

“What of it?” Jon asked. “Sarah’s new here. She hasn’t made any friends yet.”

“She isn’t going to make any friends,” Tyler declared. “Keep away from her, Evans.”

“Why?” Jon asked.

Zachary looked like he was about to punch Jon. Tyler put his arm on Zachary’s shoulder.

“Look, Evans, you’re a slip,” Tyler said. “An outsider. But Luke and I are cousins.
Zach and Ryan have been my friends since kindergarten. The four of us were in Cub
Scouts together, Pop Warner, all of it. You’re a good soccer player, and you’re okay.
We like you. But you’re not one of us. You don’t belong.”